Sports Day!

School schedules have been horribly inconsistent this past month.  Every day the students and teachers have been preparing for Sports Day.  I had no idea what to expect, other than shouting and drums that I could overhear from the field during preparations.

Sports Day is a Japanese tradition.  Elementary schools (shogaku) through high schools (kookoo) have sports days.  The student body is divided up into colored teams and are pitted against each other in several wacky events. 

To be honest, the day started off pretty hum-drum.  All the seventh grade boys raced the 200m, then the girls raced the 100m, and then the eighth graders, then the ninth.  I ran track in high school and the 200m was my favorite.  I was excited to watch! How fast were these kids?  What would their times look like?  Wait, where's the clock?  Where are the timers?  What the heck is going on here?!?!?!

Heat one blazed around the track and across the finish line.   Then each boy dropped a card into a box.  What?  Who won? 

Heat after heat ran, and heat after heat finished without a mention of winner or loser.  Each kid just walked up and dropped his card into a numbered box.  Maybe I'm biased, but if it isn't timed, it isn't a race.  Races need winners.  I timed a few heats, but started getting stares from the families around me.  I guess my watch beeped too loudly.

Every event at Sports Day is a team event.  Winning a race as an individual only scored team points, not individual accolade.  Once I realized that this was all about cooperation and team standings, I was able to settle down and enjoy the remaining events.

There was the event where all the boys took the field, and did stretches to the drum.  Yeah, it started off slow: Boom, arms to the front, boom, arms up, boom arms to the side.  Whee!  Here goes my Saturday!  Then they started the teamwork thing again.  First there was the tower.

Then came the human pyramid.

Wow.  Kids working together and trusting each other like that is awesome to see.  Next up came team dances and cheers.  Again, seeing so many kids choreographed, moving in unison was a sight to see.

The last events were the relays.  The goofy fun relays.

The girls competed in the Centipede relay.  It was like our three legged race, but amped up three notches.  To keep rythm the girls yelled "ichi,ni,ichi,ni..." (one,two,one,two...).  Chanting duty fell to the back girl.  Watching teams trip made everyone cringe.  There were dozens of five girl pileups, but  thankfully no one was hurt.

I'm not sure what the boys' relay was called, so I named it the Wedgie relay.

The whole darn race was cringe worthy for me.  How is the top guy not getting racked?  A few teams biffed it in this race too. Again no one was hurt.

In the end, the green team won.  Each team recieved a speech from the principal, with trophies and banners going to the top three teams.

Sports in America seem to revolve around individual stars.  In Japan, only the team matters.